كَذَّبَتْ ثَمُودُ وَعَادٌۢ بِٱلْقَارِعَةِ
Most sūra names are taken from some striking word occurring within the sūra; the occurrence of such a word in another sūra is therefore not in itself surprising. What is surprising is the gathering of the names of the resurrection in one place: Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa names the resurrection by three separate names — ḥāqqa, qāriʿa, wāqiʿa. All three are on the same metre, all three are active participles.
In the section on al-Qāriʿa a table of the names of the resurrection was given, and what was recorded there was this: each name brings forward one aspect of the event. We now see the first three rows of that table gathered in a single sūra:
| Name | Root | What it brings forward | Its place in al-Ḥāqqa |
|---|---|---|---|
| ٱلْحَاقَّة | ح-ق-ق | Being verified | 1, 2, 3 |
| ٱلْقَارِعَة | ق-ر-ع | The blow | 4 |
| ٱلْوَاقِعَة | و-ق-ع | Falling, coming to pass | 15 |
And the distribution is meaningful: the sūra uses its own name at the opening, qāriʿa as the thing the past peoples denied, and wāqiʿa as the moment the ṣūr is blown. Three names, that is, at work in three separate tasks.
This verse was already mentioned in the section on al-Qāriʿa; the finding there was this: the word qāriʿa is used in the Qurʾān both of a disaster that comes in this world (al-Raʿd 13/31) and of the resurrection, and the smaller stands as the herald of the greater. Al-Ḥāqqa 69/4-6 establishes exactly this relation: what they denied was the great qāriʿa; what came upon them was the small one.
The verse does not say "they denied their messengers" or "they denied God". It gives the thing they denied as the resurrection.
This is a choice, and it carries the logic of the sūra. The story of Thamūd and of ʿĀd is told in detail elsewhere in the Qurʾān, and there what they reject is the call of the messenger. Here the sūra goes down to the core of the rejection: rejecting the resurrection.
The reason is the sūra's own subject. The destruction that comes upon a people in this world is a small-scale rehearsal of the resurrection: it was claimed, and it came to pass. Those who denied al-qāriʿa, that is, had al-qāriʿa come upon them. To say this, the sūra names the thing rejected and the thing that came in requital with the same word.
Historical order puts ʿĀd before Thamūd; and elsewhere in the Qurʾān they are generally named as "ʿĀd and Thamūd" (for instance al-Tawba 9/70, Ibrāhīm 14/9, al-Furqān 25/38, al-ʿAnkabūt 29/38; the sequence at al-Fajr 89/6-9 likewise begins with ʿĀd). Here the order is reversed: Thamūd first, then ʿĀd.
| Explanation | Description |
|---|---|
| The requirement of the verse-ending | The fifth verse ends with bi'ṭ-ṭāghiya, the sixth with ʿātiya. The destruction of Thamūd is told in a single word, that of ʿĀd in a long description. Putting the short one first allows the long one to carry the sūra's momentum |
| Nearness to the audience | The homeland of Thamūd (the region of al-Ḥijr) lies on the Meccans' trade route to Syria; the remains were visible. The movement may have been from the near to the far |
| The order carries no claim | The verse is not framing a chronology; it makes the two peoples the subject of a single verb (kadhdhabat) and only then separates them |
The third is the most cautious. The first two are possible explanations; I present none of them as a transmitted report.
A note on grammar. The verb كَذَّبَتْ has come in the feminine, although the subjects are Thamūd and ʿĀd. The reason is that in Arabic tribal names may be treated as masculine (counted as a people or a body) or as feminine (counted as a tribe). Here the feminine has been preferred; and the verb has moreover been inflected to agree with the first of the two subjects — in Arabic, when the verb comes first it agrees with the first subject. Thamūd here comes as diptote (taking no tanwīn), while ʿĀd has tanwīn. The word Thamūd occurs in the Qurʾān sometimes with tanwīn and sometimes without; when counted a tribal name it is diptote, when counted the name of a forefather or a people it is not. This does not change the meaning.